- 45 minutes 14 secondsThe Subtext: How to Leave Your Church - Ask Us Anything 2
It’s the first birthday of The Subtext! Savannah and Lee celebrate with an “Ask Us Everything” episode, answering listener questions about Bible translations, music, patriotism, how to leave your church community, and more.
Thank you to everyone who made year one of The Subtext special. We love you! Send your AMA questions anytime to us @thesubtextshow on Instagram or to [email protected]
Things we mentioned in this episode:
Join us for No Small Endeavor Live November 22 - The Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Méditation from the opera Thaïs by Jules Massenet
Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber
Down There by the Train by Tom Waits
A Change is Going to Come by Sam Cooke
Little Girl Blue by Nina Simone
Kim Stanley Robinson on No Small Endeavor
Consumerist corner: Stanley cup, Apple AirTag, Exfoliating Lip Balm
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30 September 2026, 9:00 am - 51 minutes 16 seconds281: Annie F. Downs: What’s Holding You Back?
What's holding you back from your dreams? Annie F. Downs wants to help you diagnose and respond to that question. She says often what’s holding you back is rooted in something that was either stolen, killed, or destroyed.
In this conversation, the New York Times bestselling author and Lee talk about her new book, Don't Let That Hold You Back.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Annie F. Downs
Thank you to our sponsors:
The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit IGottaAsk.com to learn more!
SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow.
Tickets to Nov 22nd NSE Live in Nashville:https://www.nashvillesymphony.org/nosmallendeavor
Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.
No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
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28 September 2026, 10:00 am - 57 minutes 48 seconds280: Unabridged Interview: Marisa Franco
This is our unabridged interview with Marisa Franco.
Attachment theory is trendy right now, and the goal is often the coveted title of "securely attached." If you’re that, then you're always calm, never spiraling, never needing anyone to hold your feelings for you. Psychologist Marisa Franco built her career studying attachment, but when she started to look at the parts of her that weren’t so secure, she began to “approach these parts of myself that I struggle with as these parts are perfect, too.”
Franco is a psychologist and assistant clinical professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends. Her new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, argues that real security starts on the inside, in how you treat your own feelings, not in how well you manage everyone else's.
Key Ideas
Reassurance Can Backfire — Telling someone they're wonderful can leave them feeling more alone, not less, because it collides with what they already believe about themselves.
Confront Your Own Feelings Before You Hand Them to Someone Else — The healthiest response to hurt starts with naming it privately, not making another person immediately responsible for it.
Worth and Behavior Aren't the Same Measurement — You can do something genuinely unhealthy and still hold full value as a person; collapsing the two makes change harder, not easier.
Shame Rarely Produces Lasting Change — People who change out of shame usually just trade one form of self-punishment for another, since the underlying pain never got addressed.
Memories Are Predictions, Not Fixed Records — Revisiting a painful memory and offering yourself the care you needed at the time can change how that memory is stored and how much power it still holds.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Marisa Franco
Thank you to our sponsors:
The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit IGottaAsk.com to learn more!
SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow.
Tickets to Nov 22nd NSE Live in Nashville: https://www.nashvillesymphony.org/nosmallendeavor
Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.
No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25 September 2026, 10:00 am - 47 minutes 47 secondsThe Subtext: Gen Z’s Speaking Problem, Revisiting Nate Bargatze, Meta’s Child Safety Settlement
Turns out, Gen Z is talking less, scrolling more, and forgetting how to be human.
This week, Savannah and Lee unpack the surprising decline in everyday conversation and why talking to strangers actually matters. Then a listener’s question prompts them to revisit Nate Bargatze drama. Does calling in vs. calling out work with public figures?
And things get spicy when they dive into Meta’s $17 billion child-safety settlement, social media addiction, kids and algorithms, free speech, government regulation, and the complicated question of who gets to shape us online.
Tell us what you think! DM us on Instagram @thesubtextshow
Things we mentioned in this episode:
Gen Zs like me are speaking 451 words fewer every day – and I know why by Esme Gordon Craig
Heather Holleman on No Small Endeavor
Jemar Tisby on No Small Endeavor
James Lawson on No Small Endeavor
Free Speech Part 1 - The Subtext
Free Speech Part 2 - The Subtext
The Social Reckoning Trailer
Follow The Subtext: Instagram | Threads | X | YouTube | TikTok
Follow Lee: Instagram | Twitter | Lee's Newsletter
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Join our Email List: nosmallendeavor.com
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23 September 2026, 9:00 am - 50 minutes 50 seconds280: Marisa Franco: Why Secure-ish Beats Perfectly Secure
Attachment theory is trendy right now, and the goal is often the coveted title of "securely attached." If you’re that, then you're always calm, never spiraling, never needing anyone to hold your feelings for you. Psychologist Marisa Franco built her career studying attachment, but when she started to look at the parts of her that weren’t so secure, she began to “approach these parts of myself that I struggle with as these parts are perfect, too.”
Franco is a psychologist and assistant clinical professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends. Her new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, argues that real security starts on the inside, in how you treat your own feelings, not in how well you manage everyone else's.
Key Ideas
Reassurance Can Backfire — Telling someone they're wonderful can leave them feeling more alone, not less, because it collides with what they already believe about themselves.
Confront Your Own Feelings Before You Hand Them to Someone Else — The healthiest response to hurt starts with naming it privately, not making another person immediately responsible for it.
Worth and Behavior Aren't the Same Measurement — You can do something genuinely unhealthy and still hold full value as a person; collapsing the two makes change harder, not easier.
Shame Rarely Produces Lasting Change — People who change out of shame usually just trade one form of self-punishment for another, since the underlying pain never got addressed.
Memories Are Predictions, Not Fixed Records — Revisiting a painful memory and offering yourself the care you needed at the time can change how that memory is stored and how much power it still holds.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Marisa Franco
Thank you to our sponsors:
The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit IGottaAsk.com to learn more!
SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow.
Tickets to Nov 22nd NSE Live in Nashville: https://www.nashvillesymphony.org/nosmallendeavor
Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.
No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
21 September 2026, 10:00 am - 1 hour 9 minutes279: Unabridged Interview: Steve Cuss
This is our unabridged interview with Steve Cuss.
Anxiety is contagious, and most of us catch it without noticing: from a tense meeting, a hard conversation, a parent, a group chat. After an emergency, an ER doctor pulled a young hospital chaplain aside and gave him some life-changing advice: anytime somebody's heart stops, first take your own pulse. He learned that, in order to help, he needs to first notice what’s going on inside of him.
Steve Cuss is a pastor, leadership coach, and author of Managing Leadership Anxiety and The Expectation Gap. He spent a crucible year as a chaplain in a level one trauma center, attending more than 250 deaths, and has spent the decades since teaching leaders and families how anxiety is contagious and can be passed between people. In this conversation, rooted in systems theory, he gives you the practical version: how to tell when reactivity has hold of you, the five false needs that drive all humans, how to see anxiety in a room instead of catching it, and how to sort what is actually yours to carry from what is not. If you want to be the steady person for the people you love without going numb or over-functioning, this is the toolkit.
KEY IDEAS
Anxiety Is Contagious, and You Can See It Instead of Catching It Reactivity moves between people through proximity and repetition, and simply walking into the room intending to notice the pattern is often enough to keep you from picking it up.
The Urge to Comfort Is Usually About Your Own Discomfort When someone says the foolish thing to a grieving friend, it is rarely callousness. It is a caregiver trying to make their own anxiety stop.
The Five False Needs of Every Human Control, perfection, knowing the answer, being their for others when they’re hurting, approval
Calm Is Not the Goal, and Sometimes It Is an Insult When the harm is systemic, outrage is the accurate response, and serenity in front of it signals that you have not understood what is happening.
The Most Anxious Person in the Room Sets the Terms Whether they dominate the conversation or go silent, their reactivity quietly decides what everyone else is willing to say.
Most of What Exhausts You Was Never Yours to Carry Sorting what is mine, what is theirs, and what belongs to God is less about detachment than about being free to love someone without needing to fix them.
Self-Care Is a Means, Not an End Rest, retreat, and therapy exist to send you back into difficult work better able to do it, not to insulate you from it.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Steve Cuss
Thank you to our sponsors:
The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit IGottaAsk.com to learn more!
SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow.
Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.
No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
18 September 2026, 10:00 am - 42 minutes 8 secondsThe Subtext: Who Gets to Judge You? Suddenly Amish and the Myth of the Unjudged Self
Six 'English' strangers try to go Amish for a month, surfacing big questions about autonomy, conformity, vanity, and discernment.
This week we're talking about TLC's Suddenly Amish, a (very scripted) reality show where six outsiders spend a month living in an Amish community to see if they could actually join the church. Lee and Savannah use Suddenly Amish as a foundation for conversations around appearance and vanity, the "if it doesn't affect you, why does it matter" ethic of modern individualism, what Christian teaching has to say about all this, and whether any real community can exist without asking you to give up a little bit of yourself.
Things we mentioned in this episode:
A Beginner's Guide to Dying by Simon Boas
Follow The Subtext: Instagram | Threads | X | YouTube | TikTok
Follow Lee: Instagram | Twitter | Lee's Newsletter
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Join our Email List: nosmallendeavor.com
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16 September 2026, 9:00 am - 50 minutes 28 seconds279: Steve Cuss: Five False Needs That Are Quietly Running Your Life
Anxiety is contagious, and most of us catch it without noticing: from a tense meeting, a hard conversation, a parent, a group chat. After an emergency, an ER doctor pulled a young hospital chaplain aside and gave him some life-changing advice: anytime somebody's heart stops, first take your own pulse. He learned that, in order to help, he needs to first notice what’s going on inside of him.
Steve Cuss is a pastor, leadership coach, and author of Managing Leadership Anxiety and The Expectation Gap. He spent a crucible year as a chaplain in a level one trauma center, attending more than 250 deaths, and has spent the decades since teaching leaders and families how anxiety is contagious and can be passed between people. In this conversation, rooted in systems theory, he gives you the practical version: how to tell when reactivity has hold of you, the five false needs that drive all humans, how to see anxiety in a room instead of catching it, and how to sort what is actually yours to carry from what is not. If you want to be the steady person for the people you love without going numb or over-functioning, this is the toolkit.
KEY IDEAS
Anxiety Is Contagious, and You Can See It Instead of Catching It Reactivity moves between people through proximity and repetition, and simply walking into the room intending to notice the pattern is often enough to keep you from picking it up.
The Urge to Comfort Is Usually About Your Own Discomfort When someone says the foolish thing to a grieving friend, it is rarely callousness. It is a caregiver trying to make their own anxiety stop.
The Five False Needs of Every Human Control, perfection, knowing the answer, being their for others when they’re hurting, approval
Calm Is Not the Goal, and Sometimes It Is an Insult When the harm is systemic, outrage is the accurate response, and serenity in front of it signals that you have not understood what is happening.
The Most Anxious Person in the Room Sets the Terms Whether they dominate the conversation or go silent, their reactivity quietly decides what everyone else is willing to say.
Most of What Exhausts You Was Never Yours to Carry Sorting what is mine, what is theirs, and what belongs to God is less about detachment than about being free to love someone without needing to fix them.
Self-Care Is a Means, Not an End Rest, retreat, and therapy exist to send you back into difficult work better able to do it, not to insulate you from it.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Steve Cuss
Thank you to our sponsors:
The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit IGottaAsk.com to learn more!
SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow.
Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.
No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
14 September 2026, 10:00 am - 1 hour 5 minutes278: Unabridged Interview: Michele Norris
This is our unabridged interview with Michele Norris.
As we practice the good life with a bit of rest, we asked four of our team members to choose one of their favorite episodes and explain why. Cariad’s summer staff pick — Michele Norris: Race, Your Story, 6 Words, Please Send
“I wanted to create a vehicle that allowed people to talk about this allegedly toxic topic on their own terms.” - Michele Norris.
Could you describe your experience of race in America in just 6 words? That’s the very thing Journalist Michele Norris asked 200 strangers to do back in 2015, when she printed a stack of postcards with these simple directions: Race, your story, 6 words, please send. What began as an exercise to spark conversation became The Race Card Project, a growing online archive comprising over 750,000 answers from Americans of every ethnicity and corner of the country. The responses are at once tender and confronting, and they hold a mirror up to a part of American life that is often felt, but rarely openly discussed.
This week on No Small Endeavor, Michele tells the story of the Race Card Project and her latest book Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity. We’ll also cover her memoir The Grace of Silence, and the inspiration behind her podcast Your Mamma’s Kitchen.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Michele Norris
Thank you to our sponsors:
The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit IGottaAsk.com to learn more!
SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow.
Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.
No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
11 September 2026, 10:00 am - 46 minutes 8 secondsThe Subtext: Lindsay Clancy & the Question of Justice
In this episode, Lee and Savannah talk about the ways Lindsay Clancy’s trial is sparking conversations around mental health, justice, and culpability.
This week, we tackle a story listeners have been asking us to cover: the case of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother who killed her three children in 2023 after months of worsening psychiatric symptoms and a cocktail of nine prescribed medications. We dig into postpartum psychosis and postpartum depression, why true-crime audiences reach for alternate-perpetrator theories even when a defendant has admitted to the act, and how mental health plays a role in seeking justice amidst tragedy.
**This episode was recorded on August 31st, 2026 prior to the declaration of the mistrial**
Things we mentioned in this episode:
Brandon Flowers album THRASHER
Join us for a No Small Endeavor live show:
September 26 - The Fisher Center at Belmont University
November 22 - The Schermerhorn Symphony Center (Pre-sale available for Patreon members)
Royal College of Psychiatrists: Postpartum psychosis
Wicked: For Good - The Subtext
Follow The Subtext: Instagram | Threads | X | YouTube | TikTok
Follow Lee: Instagram | Twitter | Lee's Newsletter
Follow Savannah: Instagram | Substack
Join our Email List: nosmallendeavor.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9 September 2026, 9:00 am - 51 minutes 50 seconds278: Summer Staff Picks: Michele Norris
As we practice the good life with a bit of rest, we asked four of our team members to choose one of their favorite episodes and explain why. Cariad’s summer staff pick — Michele Norris: Race, Your Story, 6 Words, Please Send
“I wanted to create a vehicle that allowed people to talk about this allegedly toxic topic on their own terms.” - Michele Norris.
Could you describe your experience of race in America in just 6 words? That’s the very thing Journalist Michele Norris asked 200 strangers to do back in 2015, when she printed a stack of postcards with these simple directions: Race, your story, 6 words, please send. What began as an exercise to spark conversation became The Race Card Project, a growing online archive comprising over 750,000 answers from Americans of every ethnicity and corner of the country. The responses are at once tender and confronting, and they hold a mirror up to a part of American life that is often felt, but rarely openly discussed.
This week on No Small Endeavor, Michele tells the story of the Race Card Project and her latest book Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity. We’ll also cover her memoir The Grace of Silence, and the inspiration behind her podcast Your Mamma’s Kitchen.
Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript for abridged episode with Michele NorrisThank you to our sponsors:
The Wonder Project: Subscriber support makes more great content like I Gotta Ask with Annie F. Downs possible. The Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video is available in the U.S. for $8.99/month or $89.99/year after a 7-day free trial. Visit IGottaAsk.com to learn more!
SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow.
Join NSE+ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable.
No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow @nosmallendeavor
Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow @leeccamp
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
7 September 2026, 10:00 am - More Episodes? Get the App